This new report on Ticketmaster's relationship with secondary sellers is a PR nightmare

The Government of Saskatchewan is warning concertgoers to be wary of fraudsters when purchasing tickets for upcoming concerts.

Government of Saskatchewan

A new investigation by the CBC and the Toronto Star is going to be a PR nightmare.

There’s a division of the company called Trade Desk not only helps resellers/scalpers circumvent the usual 6-8 ticket purchase limit placed on the general public, but also offers a system that automatically helps those purchasers post those tickets–maybe hundreds and hundreds of them–to sites like StubHub.

In other words, the consumer-facing side of Ticketmaster clamps down on mass purchasing. This other side helps facilitate mass purchasing, which results in the secondary market being flooded with tickets being sold above face value. And Ticketmaster gets to double-dip on service charges.

And it gets better. From The Star:

LAS VEGAS—Inside a Caesars Palace conference room filled with some of the world’s most successful ticket scalpers, a row of promotional booths pitch software programs that help harvest thousands of sport and concert seats to be resold online at hefty markups.

Clustered around demonstration tables at the three-day Ticket Summit 2018 convention in July, discussion among scalpers inevitably centred on Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket supplier that has a near monopoly on major event seating in North America and the United Kingdom.

As gatekeeper to the entertainment industry’s most coveted events, Ticketmaster implements strict purchasing limits designed to prevent scalpers from using bots to buy tickets on a mass scale. In the past, company officials have publicly disparaged the resale ticket market, calling scalpers “pirates” and a threat to fans — even urging governments to criminalize the activity.

But in one corner of the Las Vegas convention floor sat a conspicuous Ticketmaster booth welcoming scalpers with a solemn reassurance: Ticketmaster wants to share in the profits of the resale market by facilitating the mass scalping of its tickets — in direct violation of its own terms of use.

Reporters from the Star and CBC, posing as small-time scalpers from Canada, listened as sales staff pitched a proprietary Ticketmaster software program designed to help bulk buyers resell thousands of tickets.